So I had a wild time in the ice on Monday.
It started icing here before noon, but work places and schools didn't let out until exactly 3:05. Everyone. All at once. I waited through this massive gridlock for about an hour, inching forward and then sliding to a stop, praying I didn't slide into the cars in front of me. At certain points my car started sliding sideways, bouncing into the curb. Luckily the cars to the side of me didn't follow.
As I got closer to my house, I started seeing cars littering ditches. Everywhere I looked there were overturned vehicles, or vehicles that had completely sliden off the roadway and hit things. My town is divided by a flood plain, so you have to go up a hill to get to the major neighborhoods from downtown. Unfortunately, not a single car in front of me was able to get up it. It was gridlock for a long while, until I had the bright idea to make a break, take a lone side street, and cut through a hilly neighborhood. I knew it would be treacherous, but it was a large neighborhood, and the gravel trucks had already been through a lot of it. Unfortunately, not only is this neighborhood hilly, but it also only has one through street, yet none of the streets are marked as dead ends. I took what I thought was the only through street, only to find myself at the top of a hill with a cuvlesac (sp?) at the bottom. Too late, I tried to stop and turn around, but I was already sliding. I slide probably 200ft or more all the way down this hill, slamming the break all the way. Thankfully, my car stopped at the curb at the very end of the street, rather than jumping it and diving down into the valley below. I ditched my car there and trekked over to a relatives' house. Later that night we returned with several bags of ice melt and melted the whole hill. I have 4-wheel drive, so it wasn't too bad getting out of there once the ice was melted.
Yeah, it wasn't a fun day for me either, and my area wasn't even hit that badly.
